Focused on long-term investments, focused on changing the world (versus creating silly social toy apps like the rest of the Valley)

Cons

Massively large scale means slower development

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Think of your team members as human beings, not robots. I see that this happens on other teams. If you aren't a people-person, then don't be a manager. My manager thinks of our team as people, he invests in us, he is dedicated to our career development... This is what makes my manager awesome. If you aren't interested in those things, then why are you a manager or a lead? You would do the company better by being an all-star engineer/designer/salesperson/.../ whatever you were before.

Good environment, great perks, and friendly personalities make for a pleasant work environment. There is also the prestige of working for Google.

Cons

Little to no honest feedback on job performance for contractors. Even experienced contractors with good efficiency records have little chance of getting hired.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Tech personnel don't particularly make good managers. You would keep more contractors if there was constructive feedback system in place rather than "here one day, gone the next" environment. Also, losing proven, trained contractors is an expensive proposition.

Great benefits and solid pay. Interesting work. Smart people. Always on the cutting edge of technology.

Cons

Having come over as a junior member on the support team, I was constantly reminded by other teammates that they had worked at Google longer and, therefore, I didn't matter as much. I was astounded by the superiority complex numerous full-time "Googlers" had toward the temps, vendors, and contractors Google also employs. This attitude also was exhibited toward employees who came to Google via acquisitions. Google likes to stress the point of working on personal initiatives and projects. This unknowingly resulted in the duplication of efforts between locations. If it was discovered that a person in another location was working on a similar project, there was usually a meeting to compare initiatives. If the projects were similar and your peers had seniority over you, you were forced to stop your work even after having invested months on it. At other times co-workers actively stole project plans and claimed as their own. On another occasion, one of my personal projects was "taken over" by a manager who thought my project would benefit their current initiative. I was forced to stop work on my project as it had been transitioned to the manager's team. That said, many of the people are actually quite wonderful. Just keep in mind that as Google grows, there are less ways to be noticed and moving up is more difficult which means many people will try to get ahead any way they can.